U.S. light-vehicle sales probably rose in December to wrap up a three-year run unrivaled in almost four decades as consumers replaced cars and trucks that are, on average, the oldest ever on the nation’s roads.

Car and light truck sales in the U.S. probably rose 9.6 percent in December, according to a Bloomberg survey of analysts. That would cap a third-straight annual gain of at least 10 percent, the first such industry streak since 1973.

“It sure feels a lot better to be selling cars today than a few years ago,” Geoffrey Pohanka, president of the Pohanka Automotive Group, said in a telephone interview. “The age of the fleet and the attractiveness of a lot of cars that are being designed now are going to help sustain sales going forward.”

That confidence in continued demand has his Washington, D.C.-area dealer group expanding only a few years after retrenchment. Pohanka closed three Saturn stores and a Chrysler- Dodge outlet as part of the 2009 restructurings of the predecessors to General Motors and Chrysler. In 2013, he plans to build a second Honda store in as many years and also will add a new Volkswagen dealership.

U.S. light-vehicle sales in December likely climbed to 1.36 million, the average of estimates by nine analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. That would push deliveries for the full year to 14.5 million, the best annual total since 2007.–Article courtesy of Bloomberg

Students who average more study hours do better in school. But a study published last week in the journal Child Development shows that students who stay awake to study more than their average – i.e. to cram – up their odds of failing a test or having difficulty understanding instruction the next day.

To allay fears of correlation not implying causation and all the myriad other factors that could confound a study like this (perhaps students who cram are the same students most likely to do poorly in school?), the UCLA researchers Gillen-O’Neil, Huynh, and Fuligni had 535 students keep track of their sleep time, study time and academic problems for 14-day spans in 9th, 10th and 12th grades. The longitudinal data of these student “diaries” allowed the team to ask how individual students performed on days after average sleep/study, compared to the same student’s performance on days after which the student had traded sleep for study.

Interestingly, they found that in 9th grade, there was no penalty for cramming. In 10th grade, staying awake to study started to predict higher next-day hits for the responses “did not understand something taught in class” and “did poorly on a test, quiz, or homework.” And by 12th grade, kids who traded sleep for study showed a marked spike in academic problems the day after cramming.

The researchers offer a nifty explanation for the bloom of the cramming penalty across high school. See, kids get overall more sleep as freshmen than they do as seniors – from 7.6hrs/night in 9th, to 7.3hrs/night in 10th, to 7.0hrs/night in 11th, and finally 6.9hrs/night in 12th grade. It’s as if a freshman’s generally adequate sleep can absorb one night’s cramming, but a senior, who is already getting more than 2 hours less than the 9 hours sleep recommended by the National Sleep Foundation, is hypersensitive to any additional reduction. As your grade goes up and your sleep goes down, the penalty for staying up to study gets stiffer and stiffer.

Jamming facts into the adolescent brain at the expense of sleep is exactly counterproductive.

So if you’re a student, don’t cram. And if you’re a parent, don’t let your kid cram. And with that I think I heard even through cyberspace the great collective guffaw of impossibility. How can a high-schooler not cram? Dude, it’s like part of the high school code of conduct!

Scores, like state’s, largely flat between 2010-11 and 2011-12 but MPS’ scores are higher than in 2009-10, the first year of dramatically expanded MPS participation

Milwaukee Public Schools posted an average ACT score in 2011-12 that was higher than in 2009-10 but, like the state’s result, was largely flat compared to the prior year.

MPS’ ACT participation continued to grow as the district continues its policy of school-day testing that began in 2009-10. In 2011-12 , MPS’ participation rate was 85%, dramatically higher than the state’s public-private average of 71% and the public-only average of 61%. MPS’ participation rate was 84% in 2010-11, 83% in 2009-10 and just 48% in 2008-09.

“We expect to see scores grow as we see greater impact from the bold reforms we’ve undertaken,” MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton said. “We continue to implement rigorous college- and career-ready curricula through our Comprehensive Literacy and Comprehensive Math/Science plans. We’ve increased graduation requirements so that all of our students take the courses they need to succeed. We won a competitive GEAR UP grant that brings a total of $30.4 million in funding to better prepare low-income students who would be the first in their families to attend college. We opened two College Access Centers to demystify college, particularly for first-generation students, and provide readiness workshops. And now, we’re bringing the College Board’s SpringBoard pre-college program into five schools that serve middle-school age students.”

The five SpringBoard schools are: Audubon Technology and Communication Center, Bay View Middle/High School, Golda Meir School, Morse Marshall School for the Gifted and Talented and the Wisconsin Conservatory of Lifelong Learning.

Milwaukee Public Schools is Wisconsin’s largest school district, serving 80,000 students in more than 160 schools across the city. U.S. News and World Report named MPS’ Rufus King International School and Ronald Wilson Reagan College Preparatory High School the two best high schools in the state and among the 200 best in the country in 2012. In the past year, Milwaukee Public Schools posted a growing graduation rate 17 points higher than the rate for 2000 and growing math standardized test scores representing 10-point growth in the last six years.